Thank you for 100 strips

So for something special, here’s the start of a big long for realz storyline I’ve been scheming up almost since the strip started with all sorts of character development and that fun stuff. So before you jump on my for being mean to bishies or whatever, just remember there’s a greater scheme being assembled.

Anyway, assuming everyone reading this isn’t a Nier historian, it was a game with a troublingly jumbled backstory assembled out of scraps of other in-development projects Square had on the table. Eventually they were assigned to make a game that was supposed to appeal to American audiences, by which the producers meant “Make it star a big tough man”. Square agreed to make the rugged male lead only if they could release an alternate version in Japan where, instead of being a gruff old single dad trying to protect his daughter, the hero would be an immaculately groomed teenage boy saving his sister. Now it could be argued that they’re just trading one cultural stereotype for another (the token action hero for the token pretty-boy), but I think this really is a case where casting the hero as a pristinely coiffed teenager is a shallow choice that makes the story suffer for it. On one hand the brother-sister dynamic is a completely different relationship than the father-daughter one. While it may not be unusual for a boy to be overprotective of his sister, it brings a completely different perspective to the story when it’s a single father fervently protecting his only child. And on the other hand the musclebound Nier is… well… Frankly, not exactly an attractive person. He’s a grizzled old hunter who starts the game as a veteran monster-whacker in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, he looks like a craggy, tired middle-aged man. He LOOKS like someone who devotes every waking moment to manual labour and fussing over his sick child. Pretty young Nier looks like the kind of guy who has to wake up at dawn to meet his team of stylists. It’s a flat out bad character design, as in, it removes the character from the story for the sake of sex appeal. It’s the exact same problem I have with fighting games where every female character has her tits spilling out even if it makes absolutely no sense considering her personality and back-story.

Anyway, the experiment was as successful as anything involved with that generally lukewarm game could be considered “successful” and the pretty Nier version managed to sell ten times as many copies in Japan as the Craggy PapaBusey Nier version. It stands as a testament to one of my most reviled character design practices, which is the process of taking an old, ugly, fat, weathered, or otherwise offbeat looking character and erasing all of their faults to make them appealing for entirely superficial reasons. You can find a pretty bishounen version of anything from Severus Snape to Patrick the Starfish to Glenn Beck to Jeffery Dahmer. It gets to a point where you have to wonder, if you can only like the character after you turn it into something completely removed from what it canonically is, why do you even bother saying you’re a fan of the character?

So turn up next week for the next plot thickening installment and Oh hey, if you’re gonna be around WaiCon at the end of the month I’ll be doing some panels and hopefully selling some prints and such!

No, you said “little”. NOTHING about the Commander is “little.” “Smaller?” Sure. The number of subordinates lost in the last TIALS engagement was “smaller” than yours.
“Little?” Hell no! Them Space Commies take their pound of flesh, but “minimized” would be applicable.

You know, on my tiny, practically dead webcomic forum we had a vaguely similar discussion to this (although this was more relating to the Starfire fiasco DC had done earlier). Other than a few menfolk white-knighting their “feminist” viewpoints, the general consensus we’d got to is “bleh, sex sells” and a sort of non-committal shrug tinged with a bit of disappointment. Sadly, Nier’s chimeric, werewolf-like transformation (I like your portrayal of it, btw), is simply a symptom of that which I don’t foresee changing. If you want a more westernized, relatively recent version, look at Tyrion Lannister and his typical portrayal prior to Peter Dinklage’s Game of Throne’s. Not that Peter Dinklage didn’t do a good job, mind, but he is a far cry from the ugly creature depicted in the books.

The biggest argument I’d make to that was that I think making the dwarf a bit more attractive is actually better for the character. It’s not like every dwarf character we see in the media is super-sexy. If anything, their sexuality is usually a joke. Tyrion still looks deformed enough that he would be looked down upon (ignore the pun), but they didn’t have to slather makeup on Peter Dinklage. I’m also glad they took out that battle scene where he accidentally kills the horse because he’s hiding under it with a pointy hat.

The most frustrating thing about Starfire, probably like Nier, is that the ‘sexy’ version erased a lot of character traits. That and she was already super-sexy traditionally as a character without making her almost the antithesis of what she was.

haha when you said wai-con I thought it would be one for somewhere else in the world, not possibly perth, australia. I might possibly go but I don’t know if any of my friends would be going and anime stuff isn’t really my scene

It’d be great to see you there – come support Kelly and participate in some of her panels! Waicon’s really opening up this year, with more panels and activities revolving around gaming and popculture as opposed to purely Anime/Manga related activities

Boy i sure hope that attack leaves the commander with one of those sexy manly looking scars, and not the “i can see your anatomy” type ones.
Alas, i never even knew about the “nier” franchise? until now. coela, i am DEFINITELY with you on the entire “girls fighting better by wearing less clothing” spiel that seems to crop up in so many fighting games. And after you mentioning theres a bishounen version of EVERYTHING i immediately thought of wolverine. THEN i got TRULY scared. Because that would simply be not right. Awesome poster by the way .. but uhmn .. don’t peoples arms normally hang down to right above their knees? commanders arms length seems disproportionate, but hey, to each artist his/her own style. Minor quibble if anything ;p

HATE! They remove his facial hair, how can he be Wolverine without facial hair? Now he’s just some pretty boy who needs to be locked away in an iron maiden filled with cement and encased in cements before throw into the sea.

Fortunately the X-Men Anime makes up for this by making him MANLY again.

Fine. I will one-up you.
And not in any sort of mario/wario sort of way.
Bishie Botticelli. Squiggly lines defined courtesy of cthulu.
Undead aside, so eerie how the web has its own life.
Lycans likin’ lichen (yes i made that up)
Ours is not to wonder why.
Unbeknownst to giving props ted chiang made my head pop
Soundtrack to my life always troubbled as hubble.

And tips of fingers (if extended) to just above the knee. It’s always hard to tell when someones flexed/bunched up. Just a friendly critique of something that looked slightly off, but that slightly off may just be me :p Still a great poster.

well, that clears things up nicely, thank you! and please never mistake my opinions or quibbles for not liking the comic. even if by some off chance i do eventually disagree with you :p you know, if do something about the whole devil may cry series i can think of two more fans i could get to read you.
(neither are me btw, gimme hellsing anyday)

Ahaha, no worries, it just shows you care. Yeah, it’s always touchy stylizing things like that because generally the less you need to explain something the better and if it looks wrong it is wrong, but eh, I dunno, it’s a tightrope of caricature.

I dont currently have a webcam but yes, i know anatomy and yes, my hands relaxed with fingers straight out hang just above my kneecaps. I checked like three times because i was always under the impression this was normal.

Here’s the thing jack, though the girls where next to nothing men are fighting out there with just as little protection. Bare chests, tank tops, just clothes. There’s no real double standard here the designers go the extra mile to make men characters just as sexilicious as the chickadees.

Not a fair comparison. While big muscles may be sexy (and I happen to think they are), outfits that show off muscles in a guy are not doing so to make him look sexual. They’re doing so to show off his physical strength and power, and any sexual enjoyment is incidental and usually not emphasized. Women with their tits and asses falling out are sexual display only. The clothes will show in loving detail every curve and the camera will linger there, but how often do you see that same attention paid to a guy’s package or ass?

Plus, in any fighting game you may have one or two sexy guys in revealing clothes, but then ten other guys in appropriately-themed outfits that don’t reveal anything, and all those guys will be of varying ages and body types. With the female characters, they will usually ALL be wearing revealing outfits, and will all be young and beautiful and vary only in hair color and breast size (ranging from C to DD). Women characters aren’t given the chance to vary the way that men characters are, and that’s part of what’s so insulting about it.

The game designers sit down and design a peice of physics into the game exclusive you women jiggle all over the place. Specifically the breasts and buttocks. This physics is never applied to male character rears or even their crotches (two areas the game designers neglect anyways).

So where abouts are they going the extra mile? Since big hulking burly men are mostly male power fantasy anyways, which becomes obvious when areas men aren’t interested in are neglected.

Sir, I must dispute. In Mortal Kombat, you don’t see Sub Zero or Scorpion wearing nothing but g-strings and a massive codpiece the size of an eggplant. Flopping ALL over the place.

Oddly enough, Mileena is shown as overly sexual, now with a costume designed where she’s wearing nothing but bandages. And flopping all over the place.
Really, both male and female mortal kombat players that I have met are scared of her. Not because of her vicious personality, but more over how the creators had just gone overboard with the ‘sex appeal’.

Guile may be able to only wear tanks and camo pants to a fight…but it retains his personality more and makes him actually tough enough to cheer for and take seriously. It’s vastly different than for instance, Soul Calibur’s Ivy. Where it’s not explained over how she decides to wear a leotard with as much holes as swiss cheese, and you don’t see anyone take her seriously except to say, “Huh, look at her tits.”.

Mileena should always be oversexed, IMO. It fits with her personality (at least pre-MK9) and actually makes a whole hell of a lot of sense psychologically (as far as looks go all she HAS is her body and all she has over Kitana is the willingness to show it off).

What ticked me off, however, was Kitana’s costume.

And what REALLY got me was Sonya’s whose costumes up to, but not including, MK vs DCU were all totally practical.In MK9, however, she apparently decided to put on a bullet proof vest that didn’t fit and call it a day.

Now now jack here’s the thing men characters get just as much sexing up, bare chests, tank tops, fetish fueled leather, latex costumes, please the companies want to get the women as wet as the men get hard.

It’s not exactly a “Franchise” unless you count it as part of the Drakengard series. Technically the game is a spin-off/pseudo-sequel of that game, specifically of a really weird ending of that.

Speaking of Drakengard, I did remember that the sequel swapped out the ultra-antiheroic protagonist of the first game for a fairly generic protagonist in the second one. The history of Nier kinda reminded me of that.

Still, Nier is a fantastic game, if mostly for it’s genuinely heartbreaking story (especially in the second playthrough) and it’s amazing soundtrack.

neir was always one of my favs, it had awesome music that felt adventurous in its self, and I always loved the doting father working himself almost to death to save his daughter, even when it looked like she was doomed.
then I heard about the young guy mode and was a bit disappoint.

Thanks for the exposition, because I can’t say I ever heard about that character or game.

(Of course I’m more interested in retro and indie PC gaming. Never had a console, except for a crappy 8-bit one that had something like three games in its catalog and sold about 50 units worldwide. One day not too long afterwards it died, couldn’t be turned on anymore, so it went to the junkyard and I never looked at consoles again. Gimmie Ben from Full Throttle, Kyle Katarn from Dark Forces, the Doom marine or his FPS friends (Corvus, Duke, Caleb, those guys from Hexen…), Edward Carnby or the Robinson out of his Requiem, I’ll recognize them right away. But you seem yourself more familiar with Playstation and Xbox heroes and villains, so I’m often a bit lost. Doesn’t detract from the enjoyment since your comics are still funny even without recognizing all the references — contrarily to the countless mediocre “gamer comics” out there on the web.

Holy crap. I don’t even understand why they would consider him to be that ugly or old! I mean, yes, he does look nice and weathered (very gladiator-looking there) but he has that stereotypical face-shape to begin with. He might not be bishounnen but he is definitely biseinen IMHO. ;P

So yeah, I agree with you. I like the older guy and I like the dynamic of a father looking out for his daughter (then again, I’ve always loved that dynamic.) Hell, I’ve come to like older characters a lot over the past few years. It means they’ve been through a lot more of life and presumably are more interesting because of their experience. I mean, teenagers can go through some troubling times, don’t get me wrong. School is shit and most teens have dealt with bullying, friendship, and fitting in, but the sole height of their experience has been childhood, puberty, and school. None of which is the “real life” that adults experience on most levels, outside of a part-time job. Typically they just haven’t been through as much and, as such, haven’t developed as much as a character. Of course, someone can be an adult and never have much character development either. Generally it’s a case of someone who has lived a very sheltered and/or luxurious life but that’s the exception, not the rule.

I think the only reason the pretty one sold so well in Japan is because of their current general cultural obsession with youth and adorableness.

So afterI beat the game, which made me feel extremely extremely depressed, I wonder to myself “Hey, I wonder what the Japanese voice sounds like?” (particularly because I found Emil aggravating) A youtube adventure later and I am stunned to realize that Nier has transformed into a teenage pretty boy that looks as if he couldn’t handle the sword he was wielding. The brother-sister relationship was a completely different dynamic, and I felt it ruined the impact as the Single dad trying to save the only thing he cares for as the world around him tears to shreds.

Perhaps it is the cultural difference and the brother-sister relationship makes more sense. But I really liked the Western version because you rarely see his type of character featured in video games. He made *sense,* He was believable.

I don’t think they actually sat down and considered how the whole brother-sister relationship would play out. To everyone’s disappointment, it might’ve been a desperate move. It’s justifiable in that the company dissolved soon after (Cavia, by the way). Perhaps they were trying to save themselves, which ultimately failed.

While I like a lot of Square games, and even a lot of the pretty boys in Square, this strikes me irritating in the same way that I wish Basch from FF12 remained the main character rather than uninteresting-generic-prettyboy Vaan. Sure, eyecandy is nice, but someone that is relate-able and actually drives the story is nicer.

Basch IS the main character of FFXII, and don’t let the fact that the game tells you its Vaan dissuade you from that fact. Vaan (and Penelo as well for that matter) actually bring nothing along to the story. I went through most of that game going “Okay, the rest of these characters could probably get along just fine without Vaan needing to be there at this point.” I felt like a sidekick playing that game, and that’s the reason I consider it one of the worst final fantasies, story-wise.

I will say that Vaan’s character gets fleshed out and makes more sense in subsequent appearances he has (the DS games he appeared in), and I especially think his character makes sense in Final Fantasy Tactics A-2, where he’s finally a competent sky pirate who is his own character and does whatever he feels like, and not a lump on Basch’s ass. Of course, he’s not the main character of that game, which is all the more shame for him, but his character is still vastly improved over the original.

Vaan’s role in the story is to provide Ashe with perspective. Her interactions with him give her an opportunity to see how destructive her ambition to reclaim Dalmasca could be, and also let her share some of her grief for her husband (as Vaan lost his brother in the same war). Without Vaan, what would Ashe have become after Vossler’s betrayal? At that time, she was surrounded by people she couldn’t trust (an accused traitor, a foreign prince, and a band of thieves) and tempted by the seemingly unlimited power offered by the Occuria. Without Vaan to remind her of her people and give her reason to examine her own motives, she would have held on to her anger, and likely would have become a puppet dictator.

If you think of Basch as the protagonist, Vaan seems extraneous. But Basch, while an interesting character in his own right, isn’t the one making the important decisions.

for me balthier was more the main character of ff12. he’s running from his dad, his past as a judge and all responsibility therein. dont get me wrong i think ff12 has the most unique story (we are debating after all) and my final point is this … balthier “why i’m the leading man”

I actually read something on final fantasy XII once… If I remember right, Basch actually was the main character. Through people leaving and such from the development team, the story was re-written and changed so many times that in the end they just threw Vaan in there to give the player the stereotypical main character to play.

I personally felt the story was very dry and way too slow… It’s the only FF I never beat, and after I had read that I remember thinking to myself “hey that makes sense now…”

Personal opinion though, I know some people liked it… I wish I could find a link to the interview I was reading on it :(

Anyway, I would totally sign up for the Spacefuture Navy. As long as I can be a pilot.

NIER is one of the more convoluted games I have played. It beat the heck out of Infinite Undiscovery, but it was pretty much a jumbled mess. I prefer old man protecting his daughter over emo-teenager any day. If Squeenix is anything, they are consistently bishonen’ing the heroes of their games.

OMG, yesterday snow fell for the first time this winter, and now Coela draws one of my favourite vidya characters of all time and writes a rant which explains what I disliked about bishie-Nier, too, but with better wording.
CHRISTMAS AGAIN?!

I happen to be a huge fan of dangerously beautiful men with long hair and pretty, pretty eyelashes, but I agree, something is really, really wrong with that teen-Nier. I just… Why? There’s nothing bad in gorgeous people in stories and sometimes little bit of fetish fuel on them is just a small, enjoyable extra, but why do they have to strip a solid character into an slightly annoying “meh, he is pretty” type of character? Okay, okay, fanservice might be the answer… but still, oh my god. This is the biggest reason I can’t enjoy Final Fantasy or loads of other stuff from Japan anymore. Doesn’t anyone have the mood, atmosphere and the setting on their mind while designing characters? Or at least while designing locations? Why has everything to be pristine and pretty and oh-so-fashionable? Don’t get me wrong, I like my occasional bishies and moe, but it would work better if the prettiness ment something in-universe and contributed something to the story or the mood or anything…

But, on a less desperate note, I’m so looking forward to that big storyline. Yay for that! A were bishonen (as Eve put it) ties in all the commotion about loving or hating bishies and what a being a good man means and all those things nicely together, or so I at least predict. It has made me so saaaaaaaaad to see, how many commenting here think being a good man means being a masculine man or something like that, as I see the whole dividing people up just by their sex really pointless… and to me, the “good man” portrayed in here is more of a “good human being”… but now I just completely started ranting about almost off-topic -ish things.

Ohh, and I meant to never, ever say this anywhere on the internet, but… yeah. Don’t mind my random mistakes, im an foregnre an don speek no english.

There is a time and a place for everything. Pretty Nier just maks me think of someone I saw complaining that they couldn’t make pretty people in Fallout, to which another person replied “sorry, no bishies in the Wastelands”

Which is a bit of a BS reasoning. Bishies would probably be highly sought out for the harems of powerful sexual deviants everywhere and actually have a reason to become tough fighters during their early teens: not becoming some fat mutated old guy’s sex tool.

Most of the people from Fallout looked fairly normal which was fine with me.

Hmmmm… I was totally hot for New Vegas Boone and Vulpes(as evil and misguided as he was). Boone’s personality was hot, even if his face was normal and Vulpes’ voice is what lured me in. Both of them would not be considered ‘bishies'(this word leaves a bad taste in my mouth) at all. But they were more than just their faces which is what I loved so much about the game.

Now Skyrim… I’m looking for a handsome looking Thor like guy. I’m still waiting for it. In that game for me I kinda go for looks only because some of them just don’t have notable personalities… though I do like the werewolf guy.

Which werewolf guy? farkas or vilkas? ones larger and seemingly slightly less intelligent to me, while the other has some fairly sexy eyeliner going on, is slightly smaller and seems to like to talk more. Granted this is a straight mans take on things. I’m still deciding whether or not to apply the nude mod i got, it mods EVERYONE. It’s the only thing left i have to really try out in the game, other than playing a true hand to hand combatant. (kajiity cats)

Ok i think i see the problem now. the way this page functions is that if i am redirected for any reason, my username will automatically be mangled.
I understand that spam bot filters probably flag the word “n*de” very highly, so apologies coela.

Oh that guy? i usually kill him for the good armor and ring. :( you can even do it through the bars before he escapes if your’re feeling particularly nasty.
Then again not everyone has a bow that does upwards of 1k damage. that hide armor you get is one of the few things you can slap on lydia that will .. uhmn, give her chest a much more pleasant look. the other being ancient nord armor, which is the same as aela wears, and gives her backside a much more pleasant look, with better AC. (fully upgraded by smithing of course)

I do have a bow that does up to 1k damage, especially if I’m sneaking. However, I’m playing a good character and I understood this poor saps plight. I always play my first characters as a thief with a heart of gold.
And you get Hircine’s ring anyway even if you don’t kill him. O_O

And I don’t usually have a companion cause they drive me nuts when I sneak into bandit camps and sneak kill everyone with my one bow hits.

I meant to say when I sneak into bandit camps and my companions RUIN my sneak kills.

Since they you know… run out even in sneak mode to attack the enemy. Sure the enemy doesn’t see you… but they sure as hell become more aware of you and I hate it when my companions die. I usually have to reset from my last save when they do.

You need to periodically dismiss, then re-hire your companions, because the games broken and they DO NOT level up with you correctly, until you do what i just said and re-set them. True, a majority of them RUIN sneak completely, however i’ve found aela usually doesn’t. She’s good about sneaking and sniping as long as you equip her with similar gear that you’ve got. Lydias REALLY bad though, she loves to get herself killed early on in the game.
And yeah i play thief with a heart of gold as well, (going so far as to reverse pickpocket people with better gear so they will survive better) i just have a bazillion saves because i like to see “what happens if i do this” ie: usually killing someone. In that particular mission you can only skin the guy for the unique armor if you kill him as hircine asks you to. On female characters it works out to be a v-cut bearskin rug, haven’t tried it on males yet.
And the guy DID dismember a young child, remember that.

A goodly portion of it?
Putting aside the fact that Fallout doesn’t work on anything resembling real science, instead opting for cheesy zeerust goodness…… most genetic mangling will tend to have one of two results:
#1. Lifeform construction failure. One thing out of place will result in failure to get past a particular point in development, resulting in miscarriage… like an old Sierra adventure game.
#2. Absolutely nothing. A bit of genome got mangled that… doesn’t actually do anything.

Its sorta like hex-editing files… without actually knowing what you’re doing. Chances are, if you make random changes, you’ll either do absolutely nothing noticeable… or change something absolutely vital and corrupt the file.

There is an absurdly thin (relatively speaking) band in there where mutations are minor enough not to completely corrupt the file (still thinking in computer terms), but significant enough to actually influence the phenotype… and in there we have all sorts of crazy potential changes (most of which are subtractions of existing features, since those are most common) … Any that change appearance could make someone a bit uglier, a lot uglier, just different, or even prettier.

Point being that taking a shotgun to the genome is not going to “make everyone uglier”… Because, as Revereche said… genes don’t work like that… just like my mangling my XBox 360 savegames in a Hex Editor isn’t going to make all my characters weaker.

On the note of what humans find attractive: For one, standards of beauty differ from culture to culture. For another, the average standard of beauty is based on the people you’ve been exposed to during your upbringing, as well as people who resemble you (thus the necessity of the Westermarck effect, or we’d go around banging our relatives).

On the note of genetics: Gene damage tends to be expressed through things like bone marrow regenerating at an insufficient rate and limbs dividing past the cut-off point, not through someone’s nose turning out a little bit wonky.

The PCs in Fallout don’t exhibit that kind of unattractiveness, though. They’re average-looking – just not “breathtaking.” There is no supermodel on/off gene, just a collection of traits considered phenomenally attractive in a society at the time.

So, in other words, there’s no good reason for a society to have a bunch of average Joes, but no bishies.

Joke still works fine IMO. Just replace “genes” with “hard-ass third-world lifestyle”. This is a harsh, grueling postapocalyptic world after all: even people with “pretty” genes are gonna grow up haggard.

Plus, even with “ideal” genes, a person who could look like a SquareEnix bish isn’t going to without lots of make up, make-up brushes, lotion, skin cremes, exfolliators, shampoo, conditioner, hair spray, hair dye, flat irons, and all the other luxury items that would be near impossible to find in any usable quantity in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Keep a bishounen from his beauty products for a month and you get Jared.

Now I want to trick Jared into a beauty parlor… It would be interesting!

And truly, that is definitely one of the reasons I occasionally revert into a full-blown bishie hater. Man, I want to learn the magic that makes me look all pretty no matter how harsh conditions I have to live. Sometimes I can buy it, but some other times… Yeaaaaah.

I would argue that, in Fallout 3, between the people in the Vaults going through years of inbreeding and the people outside the Vaults having the environment mutate them or melt their face off, that “normal-looking” is the new standard for attractiveness.

Ahh, I don’t have a personal opinion on Nier as I certainly haven’t played the game, but i think I got the idea about right. About Fallout… Yeah, I don’t really see how really pretty-pretty people would fit in, mood-wise or practically thinking. I’m really picky about my games and other media, and if the character designs don’t make enough “sense” or the mood isn’t right it really damages my experience, so choises like making a main character pretty and teen without properly adjusting other stuff makes me go off on a rant about more general stuff. Haha.

Also… This is kinda awesome. I created discussion! First time commenting on a web comic – success!

THIS. Oh God thank you for this. Ever since I’ve learned about the bishie version of Nier I was raging so hard about it. The whole sister-saving story is total BS compared to a father trying to save his daughter. It made me even more disgusted with pwetty pwetty bishounens than I was before.

First, there is a different degree of responsibility implied between “sperm donor” and “father”. Second, I’m pretty sure you and your sister would have a different relationship if she was your daughter. It’s like saying there’s no difference between a Mother-son relationship and a Sister-brother one.

Different, sure. The point is, either way I love her and would fight for her, and neither reason for fighting is more or less shallow.

While we’re making the sperm donor/father distinction, there’s a distinction between someone you’re related to and grew up in the same house as, and someone you truly would find difficulty living without.

I must say, I have seen people choose some pointless topics to fight to the death on, but you, sir, take the cake. Seriously, man. The world won’t end if you don’t get the last world in an internet argument. Is this really all you have to do in your life?

There is a huge difference. We’re biologically coded to be MUCH more vicious and will go through greater lengths to protect our offspring than we will our parents or siblings. That offspring represents the future of your own genetic line. Your sister? Not so much. Humans are far more likely to put themselves in danger and push their natural limits over a child than over a sibling.

Bishie Nier could never generate the necessary emotional surge, be willing to push his body to the limits, over a sibling. The gritty, manly version is since that child, in a way, represents his imortality.

While humans do share special bonds with family, we are simply unable to go the same lengths for them as we would a child.

Direct biological offspring carries 50% genetic relatedness, a high probability of high memetic relatedness (assuming one teaches them one’s own demented values so they can preach them in turn)… AND chronological advantage (it is assumed they will live longer).

Siblings carry between 0% and 100% genetic relatedness, a high probability of memetic similarity through matching descent… and don’t have the chronological advantage in most cases.
Their main disadvantage is the uncertainty of the genetic relatedness.

For that matter, parents obviously have the same genetic and memetic standing as offspring… but chronological disadvantage…

So what am I getting at with all of this?

That different members of one’s direct family aren’t all that different in terms of assumed importance.

What really comes into play are a few other things:

#1. We’re programmed to protect those family members that are too young to look out for themselves. Direct offspring is much more likely to slot into that category than siblings or parents.

#2. Direct offspring, in a sense, is a branch away from other members of one’s own family, with oneself as the locus. In other words… your kid and your sister are effectively of equal importance to you, BUT your sister has other family besides yourself to look out for her… while your direct offspring will probably only have both parents.

… SO … imagine a situation where those who factors aren’t in play… for instance, no offspring… but you do have a younger sibling and NO other family around to help out (or at best, some useless aunt or uncle). Funnily enough, the Japanese LOVE that particular arrangement.
Under the circumstances, that sibling connection would be much as a parent / offspring one in terms of import and responsibility.

If you want a real mind-fuck… consider twins.

Honestly, I think the bit most people don’t get is that it isn’t about direct line of descent as living, contiguous units called humans. It is about the genes. It is about the statistics of the genes… or at least as much as one phenotype can approximate genetic relatedness in another phenotype.
Your kids are a definite 50% you. Your parents are 50% you too. Your siblings are on average also 50% you (though much more variable). Grandchildren, Grandparents, Nephews, Nieces, Aunts and Uncles average out at 25%… Cousins at 12.5% … and so on. THAT is what matters so far as the genes that make us are concerned, and THAT is what our phenotypes are very crudely shaped to approximate.

It isn’t about immortality of you. It is about the immortality of your genes.

We’re not talking about “all” father/daughter relationships versus brother/sister relationships. We’re talking about how it fits into this particular story.

For a good example of what you’re talking about.. brother protecting sister… look at Firefly with Simon and River.

The problem with your argument is instead of comparing a protective and good father to a protective and good brother, you’re changing both. As a scientist, you should know you should only change one variable at a time.

Hm. I think I know where this is going, but I’m not going to say so not to spoil it.

I honestly would like to combine both designs and change it a little more. Rather to say I want to give Old Man Neir, Young Boy Neir’s chest armor then put his hair in a pony tail so it’s not in his damn face.

Oh mifune, do not get this one started on stalker. I already liked indie russian videogames beforehand (think nightwatch, and cryostasis) but stalker truly made me learn how to build computers and select components just to keep up with system requirements. The vital key to ALL of the stalkers is HEADSHOTS HEADSHOTS HEADSHOTS. I cannot stress that enough. It also really helps to have the best armor and rifle you possibly can, with damage winning out over accuracy. Shadow of chernobyl and call of pripyat seem to be the fan faves, but clear sky has some TRULY difficult missions towards the endgame. And if you ever get bored there is a rather large modding community thats still quite active for all of the games. A few of them even IMPROVE the original games. Story, game performance, new content, etc. If you are still struggling, just resort to carrying 25 f1 grenades with you at all times :p

Yup :) it’s one of those oldies but goodies slash indies. I seem to have a knack for finding videogames like that, that even my entire circle of friends have never even heard of. like, for instance, the path. Fun, if limited in scope, yet with a few genuinely sad/ and or horrifying moments. I also am still considering a sega emulator just to play some good old fashioned shadowrun.

Shadowrun you say? -pulls out fourth edition books- Never heard of it. -and brings up the Street Magic PDF- Does it have something to do with running in shadows? XD

Yay, the Sega version is the only good one. Not sure what Microsoft was thinking when they produced the one on the XBox. I mean unless it’s “Oh, god, he’s doing it wrong. Wait…we could just take lots of insurance on this game.”

Yeah i had high hopes for the remake of shadowrun. Those were dashed with better speed than microsoft releases patches for windows. You might try reading Neuromancer, The sprawl trilogy, and pretty much anything by william gibson if you enjoy that genre. I liked ’em. I also firmly believe they laid the basis for the matrix movies.

You know, there is a Japanese comic that does a pretty good job at not falling under that stereotype (aside from the tits) called One Piece where every character is not some bishi mother fucker who looks like he needs to spend countless hours with his wardrobe consultant. Of course, I am bias, but hey that’s me hahaha! Anywho, I just wanted to point that out. :T

You give ONE PIECE as an example for an Manga/Anime without pretty-boy design?! There are SO much animes and you choose one piece? Anything from Gundam to Jin-Roh could have served as an example for sophisticated/not-today’s-standard anime-drawings and you choose One Piece? Don’t get me wrong, One Piece is quite fun and the characters are simple yet rememberable…but it’s REALLY not one that takes a great step away from typical Anime design. Zorro/Sanji COULD easily qualify for pretty-boys and the girls got their tits ‘spilling’ out. (I mean, hurray for tits, but it doesn’t add anything to the character. They look like sticks with footballs attached.)

I’m with you on this one, i couldn’t even get into bleach, but i cannot STAND one piece, but maybe thats because of the 4kids americanised mangling of it to which i was first exposed. I mean seriously, they removed smoking characters cigarettes and replaced them with lollipops, yet left the smoke in. A friend of mine pointed that out and i was done with trying for that ship of fail. Although i must say that AMV hell uses the series to great comedic effect.

Though I’ve not seen the anime or read the entirety of the manga series, I always found Berserk to pretty well avoid the pretty-boy stereotype as well. The only pretty characters are noblemen who actually CAN sit and get made up and manicured and mud-masked and what have you, and Griffith, who’s beauty is a major story element. Everyone else looks like a Dark Ages mercenary should: grizzled, tough, and scarred all to shit.

Speaking of Berserk I have been wondering when Guts would show up in this comic, I know he uses a Huge sword but at least he has a good reason for why he uses something like that. When your fighting Demon King Kongs that heal like Wolverine you need something over the top.

See that sounds like a great idea till you think it through. It would just be Ken sitting there waiting for Jubei and Guts to die manly deaths. However Ken would never see that wait end cause Jubei and Guts don’t go gently into deaths sweet embrace.
So really it can only ever be a Berserk / Ninja Scroll crossover,

Zoro? Okay so what kind of pretty boy tries to cut his own fucking legs off so that he can escape a trap just to try and fight more so. Then takes a ridiculously deadly wound to the chest because he is to caught up in his manly pride. Sanji (maybe the only one close to being a girly man) on the other hand sits on an island filled with queers who are constantly trying to put him in a dress, he is not afraid to have a grotesque face when going gaga over the ladies, and the many other lists of characters go on and on. I mean for fucks sake, there is a guy who’s main power is farting and launching himself into the air! That’s pretty fucking manly (or juevenile?). But yes, the main point is diversity.

Word of god has it that Kainé does, indeed, have a penis. That’s why “she” wears nothing but lingerie – she’s putting EVERYTHING out there as a sort of pre-emptive defense against the kind of torture that she had to deal with when growing up as a child.

Oh, also – first post for me, and Coelasquid – THANK YOU. Not only for 100 strips of Condensed Awesome, but also for the amazing work you do on your animated series.

Thank YOU for a hundred strips. I love a comic that can make me laugh, but can also make me smile.

Nier is a weird title. It’s a game based off an alternative ending of a depressing as all hell game no one bought. I picked it up in a bargain bin and had a good laugh with it though. It was good it tried new things, even the things that didn’t work. It’s great to see your versions of the characters.

I find Drakengard had its “redeeming” qualities. Like, how every character was a bleeding psychopath or otherwise a social reject, and how the story was, indeed, horribly depressing. You don’t get many games that make you feel sympathy for a murderer. ;D

well was fun while it lasted, i get the feeling ill be dropping the comic, doubt you care, but i came for macho man laughs not for an artist venting over issues they dont like, which has so far become more frequent, i wish you luck in your endevor, let me know when you’re off this story arc and back to comical macho man jokes

So long, Kotih. You and all you have done for us will be miss- what’s that? You’re some random person that nobody here knows and even less of us give a shit about? Oh. I guess in that case good riddance and don’t come back, then.

Ah, but you see, Mr. Cook, I’m not announcing that I’m leaving in a way that suggests that people should know or care. Kotih up there seems to think that by leaving he’s hurting us all somehow, and I find that amusing. Apples and oranges, my friend.

Dang! I love this game. For some reason my favorite characters were not very popular (Nier, Weiss). And I agree, manly Nier fits the role better. Also the DLC has his wife on it, how does that work in Japan?

The ending was awesome too. But gotta take a big dive giving up 100% completion to save everyone who dies in the story. I just don’t see the bishie version being able to do that.

You know, I have to say, personally I think the old man version is more attractive than the teen, but maybe that’s just the whole preferring someone NOT to look like death warmed over.

Also, while I hadn’t even heard of the game prior to this comic, a quick look at wikipedia suggests that the old man version was only released for XBox 360 in Japan, while the prettyboy was on the PS3. Which would certainly explain the difference in sales; XBox has never been particularly popular in Japan, so of course the version for the more popular console would sell much better…

I’ve been replaying this game and, oddly enough, wondered if you were going to touch on it. Happy that you brought in the mention of pretty boy Nier. :I One of the reasons why I enjoy Nier is because he isn’t the pretty boy and doesn’t meet the standards of ‘man pretty.’ It lets you focus on the game. Plus I like the idea of the father protecting his daughter over brother protecting sister whilst making sure his hair is place.

I’m not super far into it, but it’s kind of like a mashup between Zelda and Harvest Moon playwise. Nier is out doing odd jobs to raise money for his daughter’s comfort and eventually combating an overarching menace, but he’s still tied to the home that he returns to every night. It’s kind of a sad story, that his daughter just wants to be with him and play and enjoy what time she has, but he doesn’t want to see her out of bed for fear that it will exacerbate her symptoms. He doesn’t have any time to spend with her because he’s so single-mindedly focused on finding a cure, so all you see are little snippets from her journal like “Today was daddy’s birthday! I wish daddy was here”. A confusing game and a cautionary tale all in one.

No but seriously i love zelda and Harvest Moon since im little, and if thats one of the cases where mixing two great thing creates Awesome; like peanut-butter and chocolate; im soooo going to buy this the next time i see it in a store. (or is it more one of that cases where mixing two great things create rubbish? Like cake and nacho-cheese?)

Pretty much what I’ve heard. I read an online synopsis and it seems in line with the related Drakengard series in terms of tone.

Drakengard itself was a bit different. I wouldn’t call Caim, from game one “bishie” exactly, although as a nobleman he is a little bit foppish visually even as he gets more and more violent. Drakengard 1 and 2 are some of the few games whose plots, depending on the endings you get, can be played as straight-up tragedies. Like Nier, the happiest possible ending for D1 is the “ignorance is bliss” ending where it only seems bittersweet because you don’t see the rest. D2 is the only conventional “the harder endings to get are the happier ones.”

Nier is truly one of the best games I’ve played on the 360. It easily beats out all of the other RPGs this generation as far as storycrafting is concerned, and I honestly have to bow down before the gigantic brass balls of any developer willing to just keep Piling On Teh Sad™. Especially when the fridge horror kicks in. I highly suggest actively avoiding any and all spoilers for the game, though I will say this – I cried more manly tears at the various endings than I did even for Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows.

I thought Nier was a vastly under-appreciated game. It has a great plot and a striking ending, and Father-Nier is a great character. It doesn’t spare the players and isn’t afraid to bring on the dark themes. People don’t care about it, though, because apparently the only thing people want Squeenix to do is make Final Fantasy games. ><

I feel like a terrible person, but were I given the choice between games, I’m pretty sure I’d choose the bishonen version. Sure, aside from marketing — manly Nier would not have sold well in Japan, at all, and I think they made the right choice financially — there’s no real reason for the switch, but it’s not like the published source material we know and love was messed around with, like some sort of butchered rerelease. It’s just two versions of the same game, made by the same company, at around the same time. The bishie is more pleasing to look at, for me, and the manly man is just a trade-off, which, ultimately, maybe does something for the story, but neither one is explicitly ‘canon,’ it seems, and since I would, personally, derive nothing extra from such a slight change, and am willing to gleefully suspend disbelief, I’ll gladly take some anime bishie kawaii desu in my vidya games. This coming from someone in the creative writing field who definitely appreciates storylines, motivation, and the dynamic of character appearance. Though, regarding, “if you can only like the character after […]” I think it’s probably best to consider the two as being completely different characters, rather than one being a defiled version of the other. Or, if you want, you could see it as a more limited type of character customization?
It’s just my opinion, though, no need to go spreading it around. Coela, keep doing what you love to do!

When I say “If you can only like the character if-“. I wasn’t talking so much about Nier anymore, but rather the pervasive culture of making everything pretty at the expense of storytelling. Certainly prevalent in the fan communities for just about everything, (I’ve seen more than enough Kawaii~ Sandor Cleganes, Invader Zims, Hitlers, and Jeffery Dahmer’s to last me a lifetime) but you see it often enough in just about every facet of the media.

Think of all the buzz with DC’s reboot, when they revamped full-figured hardass Amanda Waller into a thin, cleavage bearing model sporting bright red lipstick. Or when Kathy Bates “dumpy” lead in Frankie and Johnny was recast as Michelle Pfeiffer. I’m sure plenty of folks think that’s more “pleasing to look at”, but that’s a pretty shallow reason to say “okay, everybody is hot now”. Really, I can’t think of any reason to say “Everybody needs to be hot for my personal gratification” that ISN’T shallow. I’m certainly not going to tell you it’s wrong to want to look at sexy people, but when it has that much of an impact on the story it really isn’t any better than folks who, say, mod Dragon Age to turn every party member into a Victoria’s Secret model. I don’t see how “pretty Nier” is any better than “Pretty Aveline” or “young Wynne”. Sure, it’s great that the option is out there for people who can’t deal with looking at characters they aren’t attracted to and all, but I’m not going to stop vocalizing my displeasure with erasure of diversity no matter what form it takes.

Variety is the spice of life, and it always disappoints me when it gets thrown out the window. There is nothing wrong with a character being attractive, but that doesn’t need to apply to every character.

Yep. There was a whole explosion on the bioware forums when the game came out about how there were “no hot girls” because Lady!Hawke and Aveline were to “manly”, Isabela was too “exotic” and Merril had a weird elf face or something. It was all pretty tragic and groan-worthy to watch. And even now, almost every Isabela mod you find has an option to give her white skin. Even the mods that were explicitly designed to make her facial features look less European have light skin options. You can also get the “Sexy Sten” mod that basically just turns him into a white guy and the “Hunky Fenris” that does the same, so Isabela isn’t the only one who gets that shit.

This fills me with rage… and the ‘prettier’ Aveline looks just like Hawke… WTF! I don’t think Aveline is ugly at all… and that comment the person has written makes me just… SO ANGRY!

I always thought Isabella was gorgeous as she was too, and I liked the exotic look about her. The only thing that I would EVER correct in the game are the withered looking hands they gave her. I would just make them more tough looking.

WTFFFF???!! I liked the way the original characters look… and omg ‘hunkier’ Fenris just looks fucking weird.

The point is not that Japan should feel ashamed for having bishonen characters, it’s that they weren’t willing to even give it a go. There are plenty of young, pretty characters in western games where the story suits it, and I do not begrudge any of the bishonen characters in the mutliple high-school themed games – it’s a great setting for it.

What irks me, and I think many of the other posters here, is that they couldn’t even accept a manly character in a game that set out to specifically have a more manly character. They couldn’t even try it just this once in the interest of making a great and believable story. Imagine if America or Europe turned around to any of the millions of JRPG’s and said: ‘Hey, we’ll only take this if you make the main character a credible hero and not a little bitch.’ We’d all think it was ludicrous and a poor reason to turn down a game. The issue of Nier is even more outrageous. It would be like us taking a game like Persona and saying ‘The high school student trying to balance a normal life and relationships with his gift/curse powers isn’t the right dynamic for us. He should be the same guy but a gym teacher dealing with his cushy, well paid job whilst working on his relationships with his drinking buddies and the janitor.’

Come on, give it a go just once! You never know, you might enjoy a different sort of character.

Mentioning Persona is a bad example since the original decided to pretend the setting was Japan, changing the character’s names, even going to the point of turning one of them into an African American kid…

Dear god, it’s like Metal Gear Syndrome all over again except I had not attachment to this game when I read this comic. Metal Gear Solid 2 made me die a little bit inside when I watched my favorite (hands down) video game character get subbed out for a bishy who falls up stairs, get’s pissed on, and has no traction in bird shit. *shrug* Then again, I can see where it is coming from; Japan does have a huge demographic for “cute” guys over manly men, and it’s worked well for them. The problem is, at this point they (Square), have essentially run out of ideas. It seems like there’s only 3-5 major character archetypes for bishies, while once you start varying the look of the character, the more believable other personalities become. Maybe I’m crazy, maybe I’m ranting; it’s probably both.

I didn’t mind Raiden because he was a different character, it worked with his personality, and Solid Snake was still around. It wasn’t like “And then Snake was the bishies” and they overhauled him into something that resembled Snake in name only. Like I said, I like diversity, so if we’ve already got the gruff 30-something brown haired action hero, there’s noting wrong with adding a pretty dude as his co-star.

I do feel somewhat obligated to point out that the main reason for !BrotherNier is that it’s a cultural thing in Japan. The Japanese really have a thing for brother and sister stories, so thats the main purpose they made !BrotherNier to my understanding. But I may just be talking out of my ass on this, so feel free to call me out on my bullshit if I happen to be wrong.

On that note, I do love Papa Nier. Nier was honestly the first game to make me cry, and I cried pretty badly during it. I fell in love with the characters, I genuinely started to care about them, and I loved all the character banter in the game itself, giving the characters more time to grow on you instead of just in cutscenes. For me, Nier is excellence in Video Game storytelling. Not to mention that goddamn music is easily my favorite OST to appear in a game.

So I’m really glad to see that Nier is getting some attention. Thank you. <3

Muscle bound video game characters are just as shallow as the bishies. It’s a power fantasy, men want to feel powerful when playing a game. Look at games like World of Warcraft where anything from warriors to rogues to priests look like they’re roid raging. That doesn’t make sense. There is no reason for the mage, who stands at the back of every fight casting magic and probably doesn’t really get that much physical exercise to be shaped like a spinning top made of meat.
Japan just has a different idealization of the male form, doesn’t make it any better or worse than Americas idealized version.

Agreed. However I am all for everyone enjoying there power fantasy. My wife loves battleaxe faced guy and I really really liked the story of a tired old man doing everything in his power to protect his child. You bet sexy guy takes away from the believability of the story but I doubt it would effect me any more then the silly big swords. However the hussy is my hero. I had little interest in the game tell my wife put it on and this string of profanity from this tiny little nekked girl just floored me.

I think the point here is that it was a story concern rather than a purely aesthetic one. In game, Nier is supposed to be a soldier and a fighter trained in the use of the various great big weapons he uses. Now, you don’t absolutely HAVE to be large and powerfully built to swing a big sword around (Though I’m sorry, no one, NO GODDAMN ONE, who is built like the bishie Nier could ever use a big sword like that. He might still be capable of being a great fighter, but not with that sort of weapon. End rant.), but it helps. So the point is that they had a specific theme they were going for with Nier that wasn’t necessarily “American Barbarian power fantasy” but was more “Character design fits backstory rather than arbitrary standards of beauty” and then they tossed that out the window because Japanese people are apparently incapable of looking past a character’s appearance.

Eh, dunno … when I was 18, I was a bit of a stripling myself. About six feet tall, weighed about 120 pounds and could fight fair well with a claymore. But, not having played the game, not sure how he was swinging it about.

Pretty sure that part of the reason Nier has two different protagonists is because in the Japanese family dynamic the father is that guy who works all day, gets drunk with the boss and stumbles home on the last train, instead of loving and protective father. Stereotypically, siblings spend more time together than with their parents to the point where in anime and manga you get all these stories with ridiculously absent or conveniently dead parents.

I dunno, a big part of the story dynamic was a cat’s in the cradle kind of “Dad is always too busy working to actually spend any time with his kid that he supposedly cares about so much”, that seems like it would work with the “overworked dad stumbling in late” stereotype. One of the most interesting things about the story to me was that for a guy who’s whole schtick is being a good dad, he’s kind of a crappy dad.

I see where you’re coming from and I do agree. The only issue is that to many Japanese gamers, the emotional impact means more if Nier is a brother instead of a father. There’s a supplemental book that got translated and is still on google docs that explains some of this when it is not adding even more traumatic stories to an already pretty traumatic game.

Here is the link for interested parties but I warn you that it contains MANY SPOILERS and expanded ideas that are kind of disturbing at times.

Yeah, but did he have to be a brother that wears eyeliner and looks like he belongs in a Japanese Bishonen band?

Seriously, when I think of the best brother-looking-out-for-sister animes/manga, I think of things like Grave of Fireflies. The brother is not a good-looking, slender bishonen; instead he’s a rather plain dude who is just really dedicated to caring for his siblings. He’s been forced to take over the father role because the father is largely absent.

However, I also blame this obsession with brother-sister on all the hentai involving incest that has just poured out Japan like a flood in the last two years. And it seems impossible to turn around on the Internet and not bump into it.

So um….can you please direct me to the pretty bishounen version of Kratos?

I’m not asking this as a challenge or anything, I would just genuinely like to see this, just out of morbid curiousity. As a woman who finds both manly men AND rather more feminine men attractive, I would just very much like to see this.

I’m not feeling it personally. As I said in my first comment, I find both manly men and feminine men attractive, but I really am not keen on Kratos in that form. XP I guess he’s too manly to be made feminine.

OH DEAR GOD. D: POOR NIER.
See, I have the American version of the game and I love it, though it makes lots more sense on the second playthrough when you hear the rest of the story too. The idea that they basically emasculated Nier and turned him into an incestuous bishi-brother still sickens me. Poor guy.

i can’t honestly see the boss-man (hes the most manly there for the boss) being bishy it would break my heart, but if you concocted the plot to give jared a chance to have take a mild “man- surum” that is made by some like poision i could see it happening. <3 manly jared.

Okay… This is my first post for this wonderful webcomic series so I think I’ll start things off by shamelessly praising its creator:

Coelasquid, you rock! I love your comics so please keep it up (so long as you are able to)!

Anyway, the point of this post is to comment on how odd it is for a country like Japan (who has such a strong, masculine “warrior-ideal” sort of bent) to be so obsessed with the ideal of an effeminent male hero. It doesn’t make sense… at all. Is it because of the fact that Square-Enix has been spending over a decade or so making Final Fantasy games?

It’s worth noting that different cultures have different ideals of manhood. Thanks to a history of martial arts, there is significantly more emphasis put on technique (as opposed to physique) in the East than the West; besides that, the samurai were often poets, and appreciated beauty in a way that Western countries, particularly England (real men don’t bathe!), long considered “effeminate.”

I have to disagree. Samurai were the exact opposite of effeminate. They may have admired beauty, but it was in nature and art. Men that looked weak were often stuck working in Eta jobs with women. Men that showed masculine promise were embraced (until they showed no talent or skill, and then were regulated to Eta society). Musashi said it himself – “The form of man is grace, strength and wisdom.”

Today, I think the effiminate male is mostly a product of the growing empowerment of Japanese women (and the influence of American female fans who pay through the nose to support bishies).

Today, I think the growing interest in the effiminate male is mostly a product of the growing empowerment of Japanese women (and the influence of American female (or gay) fans who pay through the nose to support bishies).

Not that there aren’t gay guys who’re into the whole femmy guy thing, but — In Japan at least, the stereotypical gay guy is a gym bunny. The straight guys already had the metro look. Games that were actually courting the gay male audience in Japan would have more American ideal male leads.

Sometimes practicality came into effect to what made something desirable. Take English knights. That water was incredibly toxic. People who bathed were literally taking their lives into their own hands. Nothing is less sexy than a dead body, unless you’re Dr West.

I’m not really an expert on Japanese culture but the whole really attractive effeminate male hero thing predates Final Fantasy by quite a bit.

The earliest recorded “bishonen” character is actually Genji from Tale of Genji. Which is accepted as the world’s first novel and dates back to 1000 AD. The character is described as so pretty one might wish he were a woman, and it is commented as a great tragedy when he grows up and gets his hair cut to the adult male style. It’s presumed this was in fact a thing that existed before this novel and the writer (who was a woman for a fun tidbit) was just following a cultural idea/tradition.

The idea comes from a variety of places – it like much of Japanese culture is hard to pin down the origin of. But it’s definitely a long held concept for them.

It gets to a point where you have to wonder, if you can only like the character after you turn it into something completely removed from what it canonically is, why do you even bother saying you’re a fan of the character?
As a KH badfic sporker, I promise to do something about this the very second I find out, one character-mutilation-hater to another.

I think we threw realism out the window the instant we started fighting 20-foot monsters in melee and coming out as anything more substantial than a thin smear, so even as someone who isn’t fond of bishies, the bishie thing doesn’t bother me. Bishies and overly macho men strike me as equally pandering to the audience. Besides that, I’d fight to the death for my sister’s fate.

You’re good at noting flaws in things most of the time, but you seem to skip over them wherever manliness is involved.

Anyway, when am I getting my game with a main character who’s old, weathered, AND skinny?

Suspension of disbelief, man, I can believe that the dude can fight 20 foot monsters, I just don’t believe that he can be perfectly coiffed while he does it. The girl with the corset-lace-up-panties bugs me about as much it it’s any consolation.

I’d be fine with a skinny craggy Nier, just like I’d be fine with a fat craggy Nier, it’s just “immaculately groomed wasteland survivor” that rips the veil for me.

I know what you’re saying, but in the end it mostly seems to be a choice of palette difference to give the impression of grunginess – American Nier has more brown to his scheme (which seems more an artifact of the “BROWN BROWN BROWN” fad in American games than anything). In the end, his armor is also perfectly intact, he has no obvious wounds or scars, and his hair is evenly thick, symmetrical, and unmatted (as someone who grew up in the country, trust me when I say that can be hard to maintain when actually doing work – particularly if you have to go without bathing for an extended time – and that it doesn’t take a lot for a wound to scar). He also has more skin exposed, which is a worse decision than Japanese Niels’s if he’s going to be adventuring. On the whole, he looks more realistic on an entirely superficial level.

Granted, I haven’t bothered to look at either game in action, so maybe there’s something there I’m missing.

At the beginning of the game when he’s IN the post-apocalyptic reality, he’s wearing grungy weathered winter gear. When the game flips to storybook mode, Nier isn’t right in the thick of fighting heavy duty monsters, he’s a manual labourer/hunter for hire. It wouldn’t make sense for him to be heavily armed when the extent of his adventuring to that point is “kill ten sheep in the outlands and bring them to the butcher”, that doesn’t mean he needs to be running around shirtless and the women’s underwear he starts wearing on his face at some point are a pretty strange costume choice, but I would say that elder!Nier’s hair looks a good deal more wiry and unkempt than his younger counterpart (actual unkemptness seems to vary between art and in-game play), as well as looking naturally grey with age more than “white hair because whatever”.

The point she’s making is that the character was originally conceived as the one type of caricature and was then totally changed because an audience whined. That’s the offensive thing about it, not the type of character it was changed into.

I disagree. A skinny pretty boy is *just* pretty. A muscular macho man is pretty to an audience that has that particular aesthetic as its ideal while being muscular -aka- strong enough to wield the gigantic weapons.

So this niel guy concept was some kind of diehard 4.0 meets animu and stained in gaming googles while the second one was just plain animu meets game for god knows which time is this already? the hole idea seems retarded but as an experiment I can totally see it being valid and it sure shows why square keeps using the same bland formula for the FF games (even tho’ it’s still no excuse for the 70+ hours of video and 5 mins. of gameplay these things offers).

I much prefer Father Nier myself, but teen-Nier really wasn’t shoehorned in just for the Japanese markets. Nier originally started off as an entirely different story, based around fairytales coming to life and whatnot, thus the whole thing with multiple books and words being power and stuff. Over time it changed and we eventually ended up with what we have now. Teen Nier was the original Main character, long before Father Nier came into the picture.
At one point Sqeenix flat out told Cavia to fuck the Teen Nier concept and just ship the Father Nier version. Cavia pretty much begged and pleaded with them to keep Teen Nier, claiming “It would completely demotivate and halt productivity among the staff”. Teen Nier is a labour of love among the staff, it’s just a concept they had started with and got attatched to over time, not Sqeenix breathing down their backs to pander to the Japanese market.

If anyone hasn’t read Grimoire Nier I really suggest they do. It has a proper timeline and backstory connecting Drakengard and Nier and explaining how the world got to the point it is. It also has developer interviews, short stories that were published in Japanese magazines and stories for the weapons. A really good read https://docs.google.com/View?id=dgvmkf89_228fxgghgg3&pli

Actually, I did my own research and found out that it’s exactly the opposite of what you provided.

Gestalt Nier was conceived first, because Cavia wanted to make a story revolving around a grizzled fighter who has seen the fallout of Drakengard, and just wants to protect the people he cares about from the disease. The Japanese version was developed alongside the original story, and the developers in both companies thought that it should go with younger Nier because the asthetic appeal and brother-sister story would sell more.

Granted, that’s how the gaming world operates – you go with the decisions that sell more copies. I mean, MW3 could have been way better, but they went with decisions that made it sparkly and subscription-ridden rather than different because that is where the money was.

Honestly I love finding out things about the game and would love to be linked to where you’ve found your information on that. I’ve only got a few sources to go by myself, but mainly the Director interview that was translated from Grimoire Nier:

-“Replicant” was almost
Cancelled in the process!?

Director Yokoo: We somehow made it possible to release both “Replicant” and “Gestalt” at the same time, but there was a time when “Replicant” almost got called off.
Mr. T: Something like that did happen.
Yokoo: It took approximately 3 years for development, but during that time we were called to a meeting with America’s Square Enix to give a brief report on the game and its progress. Back then, we planned to release the two games earlier, so we were on a tight schedule. When we realized that during the meeting, those higher ups just reasoned “Can’t we just go with “Gestalt”? We could live with not releasing a special version in Japan, can’t we?” in english. (laughs)
-And what happened after that?
Yokoo: The producer Satou, who was sitting by my side, just sort of looked at me with a “…what do we do now?” face, and I just stuck to my opinion that I really didn’t want this. (laughs) If we can’t make “Replicant”, our development team’s motivation will go down like crazy, and as a result even “Gestalt” will be released later!? Are you okay with that!? Is what I threatened them with.
Mr. T: That was pretty selfish.
Yokoo: We planned to make a sibling story in the first place. Although back then “Replicant” was to be voiced in English, but there was some trouble with the voice actors.

Commander’s been scratched. He’s infected now. Jarrod now has to decide if he has the guts to shoot command with gold glitter bullet or let Commander live a cursed life as a Were-Bishōnen. No one should ever have to make that choice.

Or, he could, you know. Shoot the emo kid. And perhaps gyrados have a natural immunity to poison/disease and Mr. fish could act as the worlds most frightening leech for the commanders “problem”. But they would have to be quick about it. Although i myself wonder why i thought of it because now i cannot unthink it.

You know, the mini-essay to go with the comic kind of graduates it from funny to almost scary. Poor Nier is a loving and dedicated father who will fight heaven or hell for his daughter, but completely subject to the whims of some guys who want to make him a cheesy bishounen because they don’t love him or his child.
As a random note though: it would be kind of funny if in the American version there was a bonus scene where someone finds a picture of the young Nier looking like his Japanese counterpart and some comment was made.

Both versions of NIER are pretty awesome and surprisingly deep. Personally I still love father-nier more, but brother nier is…interesting in his own way. Nier is still a totally awesome game and everyone should play it. (Also Weiss is the best). Now to find some way to bring Deadly Premonition to more people’s attentions…

i knew that someday you would touch in these different concepts for different markets of this underrated Game. In my mind you would present some discussion beetween the toughguy Nier father and the pretty-boy-emonier brother ( if EmoNier is yonah’s sister, this means that he is ToughNier’sson too , right ?!?)

Well I find it highly amusing someone would do this but when you look at it from a business stand point it makes sense… kinda. I mean, I don’t agree with swapping a character with depth for that of one shallow as a puddle.

And Honestly, I love fighting games, but I also agree that all the female characters are all… impractical and over sexualized. Do people realise that if a girl actually faught she would either a, look like a man, or b, be as flat as a pancake because.. well, when girls exersize they tend to lose weight from their boobs first. Look at gymnists? All those girls might be long and lean but they don’t have any boobs. Or the rediculous costumes. Don’t get me started on that part of it either.

On the other hand, I love a nice teenage japanese pretty boy as much as the next girl, but honestly, I wouldn’t want to date a guy who would look better in a dress than I would. Give me a nice guy with some muscles and a good strong jaw line and I’m far more happier with that than anything else.

I’ve never heard of that game (big shocker!), but from the two character pictures you showed, I think I like the look of Scruffy Old Man!Neir better than Angsty Teenage Boy!Neir. Now, I like both bishies and manly men, but the character in question needs to be either one or the other. Flip flopping is very confusing and creates very disturbing images in my already-tortured noggin. :P

But seriously, I’m looking forward to seeing what the epic story is going to actually be.

Hold up, is what Dante’s going through by turning into a renegade, revolutionary, angry, smoking teenager who seems to be Cruella de Vil’s son in the new Devil May Cry (DMC for extra coolness) an example of what we are going on about in here? Like the Snake thing mentioned above?

I imagine this was similar to the reasoning behind replacing Basch as the main character of FFXII with Vaan. On the upside, Vaan had absolutely no storyline significance, and Basch was still more important, so…

Maybe this isn’t the best place to look for sauce, but… I thought there was another dynamic with the prettyboy character. In America, the huge shirtless hairy chest-thumper is considered masculine, and the slight, well-manicured boyish fellow is considered feminine and/or homosexual. But isn’t the opposite in Japan? Where the huge guy with hair and muscles out the wazoo is seen as more gay than the prettyboy? Like he has something to prove? I’m not sure… it’s just something I heard along the way. Anyone know anything on the matter?

It’s not even a matter of Masculine VS feminine, just “Manual labourer” and “father” vs “male model” and “brother”. It’s like making two versions of a game where you have to go around farming an hunting and gathering and scrapping with monsters, but one of them stars Applejack and one of them stars Rarity.

It doesn’t map quite as directly as that. There’s the stereotype of a big buff gay dude in Japan, but that’s always coupled with the guy acting flamboyant or dressing in a stereotypical manner. A huge guy like the Commander isn’t going to be assumed to be gay unless he’s wearing a leather harness and leather daddy hat and prancing around.

By the same token, a bishounen isn’t assumed to be more manly than other guys, just easier on the eyes, and if they’re too feminine their sexuality still gets called into question unfortunately.

Oh god, I was wondering when a Nier comic was gonna happen at some point. Good on ya!

But yeah, that Bro Nier design choice was a load of bullcrap. Not to mention Papa Nier is better by default; he seems so much more endearing, even though apparently everything was written for Bro.

I think the best thing about Nier was that they really put a lot of effort into localization. Cavia was the one who worked on the game, Square just kinda smirked thinking they couldnt do anything. Shame Cavia went under though.

Do you think the reason you like the Western-geared version more could have anything to do with the fact that you’re a Westerner? I think it was mentioned up above that in Japanese culture the Brother-Sister dynamic is different from how we westerners perceive it, so while we’d probably exalt the Father-Daughter as more acceptable and believable, it’s somewhat unfair to judge their version by our standards.

Just a thought. Having never played the game, I can’t weigh in on it with any sort of depth.

Won’t argue that, seeing as that sort of design appeals more in Japan than the Western design would. I don’t think an artistic design would really have too much effect over the storyline though; games with less than full on serious designs can carry their weight with others that sport grittier styles, even without falling into a “cutesy” sort of story. The GCN Wind Waker told a strong tale of real harrowing adventure with an adorable art-style I fell in love with. What I’m saying is, I don’t think the art style necessarily will detract from the story of the game on its own.

As a matter of fact, WW even had the brother-sister relationship, so there ya go if anyone needed an example of it.

Never had kids have you? As one man with the father/daughter dynamic going along with the brother/sister dynamic I can tell you that they are two VERY DIFFERENT subjects. Yes, as the elder brother you have a guardianship thing going, I know I did. With a small girl you hold in your hands, and you watch her grow up…..your sister get’s hurt, you get angry and vow vengance to all that hurt her. With a child, it’s primal. Someone tears out your heart since this is your flesh and blood. You instantly become a raging wolverine and you’d rather die than see your child get harmed. Brother/Sister: people wind up in critical care. Father/Daughter: people wind up in the morgue.

And it’s that dynamic being changed that bothers Coel so badly all to sell a few more games. It’s a cynical and insulting artistic change to put yet another pretty boy up with an admittedly strong bond in place of a grizzled father that will tear apart heaven and hell to protect his sick daughter. And it is a huge change on the story line.

While no, I don’t have any kids, and I can understand the validity of the point you’re trying to make, I still think there’s an awful lot of Western thought going into the judgment of an Eastern game here. I’m no expert on the culture, so I can’t honestly say with any certainty that the dynamic between siblings isn’t just as strong as the dynamic between parents and children. You can try to erase the culture from it and say it’s a fully biological reaction if you want, but I think it’d be rather ignorant to do so.

And I can understand where you’re coming from. My concern is a change in dynamic to please another culture out of hand can ruin the story. Different dynamics work in different stories. An action comedy about strangers working together? You need people that can’t stand each other but become fire forged friends. An adventure story between two confidants working together? Best friends, Siblings, or Lovers.

A universal truth in story telling is the dynamics between characters, no matter the cause changes the story altogether. And be in Western to Eastern or the reverse can be cynical and unfair.

Japan can make some interesting manly things but you will very rarely see people on the interwebz talk about them, strangely enough. Either they are plagued with other character design problems or are simply not well known.

I was just introduced to this comic two days ago.. thank Brando for archives! So I’m now all caught up and looking forward to more manly men. I’d like to thank you in both the present and the Spacefuture, Coelasquid, for all of your hard work and for all the laughs. I’m not much of a videogamer, so I for one appreciate the explanations of who the characters are so I can get the joke too. Keep up the good work!

I find it amusing how many people are making excuses for bishieNier because “JAPANESE CULTURE”. Sure, it may seem like Japanese culture is all about bishies as a “different ideal of manhood” … if all you ever look at from Japanese culture is video games and anime aimed at teenagers (girls in particular). Japan has a wealth of pop culture that doesn’t make it to the US because it’s not as easy to sell as yet-another-bishy-fantasy-anime.

Japan is the country that gave us the badass grizzled samurai archetype. RESPECT.

That’s an excellent point. For people who forget that Japanese men can be truly strong and masculine in the stand-up-for-what-you-believe-in, have-your-priorities-straight sort of way, (I need a reminder myself sometimes), one thing to do is look at the Yakuza. Yes, they’re criminals who hurt a lot of people and ruin a lot of lives for their own selfish gain. But on the other hand, they have a definite code of conduct and an honorable standard to which they hold themselves, and they don’t go for all that eyeliner and hairspray horseshit that all the Japanese teenagers seem to be into.

well in real life, yes. but theres a good and (darkly) funny little movie called “the good, the bad, and the weird” that features an INCREDIBLY emo haircut badguy, who is truly despicable. with some nifty believable character plot twists towards the end that explain WHY he is that way. i was shocked i tell you, shocked. did i mention its live action and not anime?

Yeah. If bishounen was truly the Japanese ideal of manhood, then you’d see most Japanese men striving for that ideal. Instead we see a very small portion of Japanese guys, mostly young ones into fashion trends, going that route. Yakuza and business leaders are both rich enough to afford any look they want, and consider themselves hardcore manly, but you don’t see them trying to look like SquareEnix protagonists.

That’s just what really gets me, fandom people act like Japan is some topsy-turvy cartoon country from outer space filled with space people made of candy, where down is up and bishounen are manly. It’s a country full of normal human beings with varied taste and a lot of culture beyond video games and anime.

Brother Nier (“pretty Nier”) came first, not Papa Nier and his grizzled self. They did not strip Papa Nier of his manliness, they gave Brother Nier some testosterone. And I want to say it was confirmed that Brother Nier is what Papa Nier looked like when I was younger, but I can’t remember where I’ve read that, so I’ll leave that up to speculation. (This is the only instance in which I shall defend Brother Nier. Papa Nier all the way.) When they decided they would be translating it to other countries, that’s when they made Papa Nier because, yes, they thought it would appeal to Western audiences, and then changed the relationship between Yonah and him from being that of a brother to of a father. Other than that single detail, the stories are exactly the same. The dialogue is even the same (with standard changes for references to their relationship). Replicant Nier is the game with Brother Nier, and Gestalt Nier is the game with Papa Nier.

And both Replicant and Gestalt Nier were released in Japan, while other countries got Gestalt Nier, or just Nier.

“Lynker” posted an excellent comment way up there on why Nier and Yonah are originally meant to be brother and sister, which I am pretty sure is true.

This game is a sequel to Drakengard/Drag-On Dragoon. The original concept for the game was something along the lines of being able to go into books and stories (which is why the bosses have names like “Wendy,” “Hook,” and “Hansel and Gretel”). I am unsure if the idea for it being a sequel was only brought in after the changes to the story were made, or if it was intended to be a sequel all along.

Okay, I am done nitpicking now. I only do it because Nier is my favorite game. I am less fond of Drakengard for it’s ridiculous gameplay, but it’s story was crazy awesome, and Nier’s is even better in my opinion. Only game to make me cry.

You do know that in japan pretty boy Nier was for the PS3 (the much more popular system) and Badass Nier was for the 360 (which japan isn’t fond of much at all), right?

And while Nier wasn’t super popular here, it has a dedicated fanbase that Square-Enix acknowledged more or less as they absorbed the makers into the company as a whole and rumors of them making a sequel are floating about.

Honestly if I had a PS3 or 360, I’d have gotten that as it looks to be an interesting game.

Hey, Coelasquid, loved the comic, but I feel the need to clarify a couple things you touched on in the comments underneath. :D

NIER was made by Cavia, it was only published by Square-Enix, and it wasn’t a “jumble of projects Square had on the table.” It developed over the course of its creation from a story about fairy-tales coming to life to, well, what we have now. About all that remains of this incarnation are the names of some of the bosses, but throughout development, Brother Nier was always the protagonist.

It was Square, as the publisher, who insisted Cavia put in a more grizzled, mature hero to “appeal to the Western market”. Thus, Cavia made two versions: NIER Replicant, starring pretty Brother Nier which was released on PS3 in Japan; and Nier Gestalt, starring manly Papa Nier, which was released only on the 360 in Japan (never a popular platform over there) and on PS3 and 360 over here.

It was also Cavia’s last game, and they KNEW it was their last game, so they used it to mercilessly troll the hell out of the player, the first troll being that it is a sequel (of sorts) to Drakengard/Drag On Dragoon and is based off the infamous “Ending E.”

If you’re currently playing through the game, I echo the recommendations to check out Dark Id’s Let’s Play once you’ve finished playing to see the stuff you’ve missed. It’s linked up in my name.

I whole heartedly agree with the rant above. Having played ‘our’ version of Nier, then turn around and look at the alternate, it makes me wonder why the Japanese havent been wiped out yet for their obsession with the overly effeminate.

Is this a case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde? I heard about the strange case of Nier & Nier, but I didn’t realize they differed THAT much in appearance. …Though I must admit, Japanese Nier has very nice hair. Very feathery. His clothes and skin are so clean. I struggle with acne even in post-modern society! I wonder how his post-apocalyptic stylist and/or dermotologist manages it.

So when I read your block about how Masculine Nier was better I agreed with you nonstop, that the girly one was obviously compromising alot of dynamics simply to look like a teenager. Then you posted a comparison between the two.

Now I just feel like the scum of the earth, because the girly one just looks cooler :c

Actually- brother Nier came first from what i understand. It was changed to the father version rather messily, in my opinion, because Square Enix wanted a male character who ‘would appeal to american audiences.’ . It failed fantastically, from what I understand, exactly because of that.

Now, I’m probably going against the grain here, but there is something fantastically wrong with that method of thinking. JRPG style has worked before – I don’t like that Square Enix has chosen to dictate ‘what American gamers want’ only recently when it is very obvious that it was trashing the game for it. To demand a development team to change the original story for something so pathetically shallow was terrible. It’s spitting all over the effort they put into it.

So yes, Brother/Younger Nier came first, and was the original. You got your information wrong. Father Nier was placed into the game as a failure of a plan and a rather rude one, in my mind, to make ‘American’ gamers buy it because we obviously want big, burly men because we’re all big burly men over the big old ocean. It’s close minded stereotyping of the American wants based on a warped image of America.

(P.S. on the subject of Japanese leads and the bishounen syndrome…I find that Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann dodges this quite nicely, the only bishounen being the gay mechanic they find along the way. Not to mention that, as may surprise some people, it’s an anime which is practically busting at the seams with testosterone. But I digress.)

I find it funny how the father version of Nier looks like someone I’d make in an elder scrolls game and the younger one just spooks me, kind of like Ghirahim and all characters like him. Also after you mentioned the stylists I think I saw them to the left of the second picture.

As much as I revile the way Brother Nier looks, I’ll give Cavia props for this regarding him – it doesn’t just change the sister-brother aspect, it really does chance a lot of his relationships with the other characters too. I’ve seen it said that of the game’s C and D penultimate endings, one of them just feels right with Papa Nier, and the other feels right with Brother Nier, and I have to agree. While they’re still the same game, at least for me, there was enough of a difference between the two Niers and how the other characters relate to them to satisfy me.

This is correct, they both have their pros and cons and as dumb as the character design of young nier is, he has great character development when compared to the dadass. Saying that they changed the design into something that did not make sense for the game at all is frankly misinformed, as there are many key points in the story for which it seems that they were written with young nier in mind after you’ve experienced both tales.

Personally I did like the Father Nier character more than the Brother for about the same reasons as stated. The whole Father/Daughter thing just makes it more meaningful than Brother/Sister, not that I think that siblings aren’t close. I also like the fairly rough design of the character. While I wouldn’t say he’s hideous he does indeed look like the kind of man who’s been through some tough shit in his life.

you guys can complain all you want, but at the end, we only have our selves to blame

game designers dont want to waist months of hardwork not even getting a game sold because there main character is not pretty, it may lose them respect, but because most games dont get far off respect only, they take the latter, which is “sex sells”

Meh Diferent cultures/people like deferent things there is no right or wrong just different taste. But aaaanyway I like how the noise he makes while scratching himrI wonder if he gets turned back to normal if Commander beat the shit out of him but I cant imagine hitting a kid even if he deserves it.

The poster is mindblowing. Oooo-frakkin’ RAH! Really looking forward to your extended plotline- normally action, drama and comedy are tough to blend, but Phil Foglio has done it and I think you can too. BTW, in your copious free time, I think you might enjoy a short story on the Tales of the Zombie War site, “Father-Son Time”- we seem to share some basic views and your depiction of the Commander has helped me to define my characters in subsequent stories.

While I totally agree on the point of how changing Nier’s character in such a way completely alters the story, and how this is a problem in fandom culture, there ARE a handful of people out there, many of them younger web artists, for whom the reason they draw all bishonen is actually that big manly men are kind of hard to draw.

I had that problem for years despite the fact that I first started drawing by imitating Filmation (He-Man, much?) and western comics. For some reason, even after multiple art classes, I just could not seem to grok the method to drawing proper emotion out of a tired, grizzled old man, or a huge, scarred up gladiator. (Which frustrated me no end, let me tell you.)

Until I found YOUR art. I’m particularly fond of the “Nirmana” page, because it really illustrates what I mean. Pulling that kind of sweet reverence out of a face, especially a heavily built, manly face, that hasn’t been pared down to the most basic features, takes an understanding and skill of that kind of face that not everyone has the patience to acquire.

What I’m basically saying is, not everyone can make men manly and beautiful at the same time like you do. This is probably changeable. I’d love to see a drawing book out of you (I would totally dish out money for a drawing book out of you.) You just don’t SEE too many drawing books dedicated to nothing but Manly men, because you know, a lot of the ones that touch on them are much more concerned about how to draw bathing suit pinup girls. But even becoming familiar with your art has given me a better understanding on how to draw such men myself. I am terribly grateful for this webcomic, because it introduced me to your art and work, so thank YOU for the 100 strips.

All that said, the idea of someone suffering the Curse of the Werebishie makes me laugh no end. I think it’s especially funny that young Nier is a fairly ugly bishonen. XD

I seriously have to go with the Coelasquid on this along with the others. The quote -JRPG- way of doing things really does take away from what could be very deep ‘n’ involved characters on all fronts. It just cheapens the creativity of the art, the writing, the gameplay, the relationships, and especially the female characters in every way. It is a copy paste way of doing things and you could swap most of the characters in these poorly written stories without noticing a single bloody change. They are indeed that much without any depth as a character at all.

Hell, the biggest hay day for Japanese stuff was when the graphics wouldn’t allow them to portray things this way. Since the sprites, cell shading, etc prevented them from doing it in some of the extreme ways they do it now. Then as the graphics grew we started to see more Sephiroth’s ‘n’ Chun Li fighters. You couldn’t fill in any of the gaps with your imagination anymore either due to the designs. They just wouldn’t allow you to do it they are so bland.

That and the Japanese went back to their forcing women into other train cars routine because they are just that stinking pervy. They brought that into their games and that even further degraded the content. I won’t even touch on it with anime and fan service. I can’t recall the last female lead even worth a second glance at best it’s that bad.

I want to feel for my characters! I want to connect with them or even have the desire to cosplay as them! However with the way they are now… There is nothing to connect with ‘n’ you’d to be a bimbo brainwashed blonde (or native Japanese brainwashed female whore) to even want to do so. Which it’s sad… it’s sad that the market is so pathetic it just accepts it ‘n’ then defends it better then they would defend their own child.

I love how he assumes that I only see it in Japanese shit and suddenly I ignore it every stinking other place it is. After all clearly by being against something you are tossing all your morals ‘n’ shit out the door just to pick on guy. Yep! That makes total fucking sense.

Also love how you went down this damn route when the comic IS ABOUT JRPG’S SO OF COURSE DUMBASS WE WOULD BE SPEAKING ABOUT IT ON THAT TOPIC. Now if we were maybe on something like the League of Legends forums WE’D TALK ABOUT THEIR SKANK CRAP THERE! Jesus christ. It’s not unusual asshole to speak on topic about the current subject.

Now even if the others do it like we all know? The JRPG’s are the stinking worst at it or the Japanese in general. Have you actually bothered to see their stuff outside of anime or all the stuff that doesn’t get translated? Those jackasses make most of what other countries do look pretty stinking tame. So ya, the crap you spouted doesn’t invalidate a damn word of what I said.

Calm down interned “badass” I got hat conclusion since you keep saying japan in your little rant even tough the same things happens in almost every single culture. But anyway feel free to write another wall of text about how wrong I might check it in a few days.

You’re extreme arrogance is astounding. It always amazes me how pathetic trolls like you can just zip in then think they can spout some random tiny moral BS then zip off like it meant poodiddly.

Now it doesn’t matter if you like it but you know what? Some cultures do take things further then others and in extreme ways. It means little if you are willing to accept or acknowledge it but it still happens. Ever culture in the world has issues but some excel far better then others in key areas. Jerkwad.

It stands as a testament to one of my most reviled character design practices, which is the process of taking an old, ugly, fat, weathered, or otherwise offbeat looking character and erasing all of their faults to make them appealing for entirely superficial reasons.

Incidentally, this is about sums up how I feel about ever piece of Kefka fanart ever.

I honestly don’t care that your horribly biased against pretty boys Squid. I do however think you should have had Neir Gestalt’s character shouting something in Japanese as America never got a translated version of that game. Just as nod. I did notice you didn’t have him say anything so maybe that’s why and you didn’t feel like bothering to look up Japanese words..

people still play wow? even after they resorted to stealing kung fu panda as new content? Thankfully i’ve never touched that chunk of garbage. I learned my lesson back when text games on bbses were the rage. Oh, and btw your wow is based on those games. Literally.

WoW had said panda race long before kung-fu panda existed. Not that anyone really cares one way or the other. Except you. However you aren’t the only one to pointlessly whine about a game you don’t happen to play. That’s all the rage apparently.

That other little bit might be true.. however.. WoW as a whole is nothing but stolen ideas. Hell, a majority of it’s crap was copied straight out of the Warhammer universe. A world which they didn’t even give a nod ingame.

The game has went to catering to the lowest common denominator and the latest expansion proves that even further then the last one. I pity the people still loyal to it.

Perhaps. But i do have 3 close acquantainces who DO play it, and even they are getting fed up with it. And i’ve watched them play over their shoulders and thought “you LIKE crappy graphics”? 0.o this is WHY i don’t play it. I could put up with stolen content if the damn thing just LOOKED better. ick. Plus as i’ve previously stated i’m also not too keen on paying more than once for a game that doesn’t offer much (to me at least) enjoyment. And i don’t enjoy mmorpgs on the simple basis that they are usually filled with people like you. I’m not “whining” I have very clear and precise reasons why i don’t like the thing, and will leave it at that.

Yeah though I’d admit that the remake of wow was fun. But you cant remake all the little annoying kids and elitist (lol) players in the late game content. Seriously props to those who dodged the bullet by not playing WoW it is a horrible addictive game.

Actually.. cartoony -quote- like graphics stand the test of time better then realistic graphics. The realistic stuff looks dated by the time it releases and a year later just horrid up to the current game releases. The realistic graphics like setting just ages like milk left out on the counter.

However you are right about WoW’s being dated. They promised ages ago to work on that before Lich King ‘n’ all after were even released as public ideas. They never once looked back on it but -Blizzard- as a company is pretty lousy. They treat their long term fans poorly, they do cater to the tits ‘n’ ass market, the guy that stands in the fire, and they milk everything in retarded ways for cash. The newest Starcraft three way split anyone?

I’m glad you made that second post because I was so about to bitch slap you Spade. I was like … he’s one of those peeps that ignores slapping the peanut gallery that needs it… and goes for the peeps that want a revamp… Must.. kill… spade… then I saw your next post.

However.. the guy does have a small point though. There are alot of games that have amazing potential but squander it right ‘n’ life. All in favor of what he said the cheap easy money like the pandas. WoW is a game that does this alot but not in the way he put it. They just do stuff like favor a single side, toss second hand story in, re-write plot just to make something work for one side, yada yada. The list goes on in that vein. It is part of the reason I quit. I love a good story even if it is a borrowed one with credit given (Which they should have given but did not.) WoW tossed that out though in favor of money and making one side happy. Course.. that other guy worded it so so so poorly. :3

But, to credit the team, they did actually change some of dialogue and voice acting direction for brother nier to make it into a slightly different story. That was sort of neat. (he started as a NOTHING CAN BRING ME DOWN type of guy and ended up being a broken shell after doing everything and failing versus father nier who was basically FUCK EVERYTHING WHERES MY DAUGHTER!)

I heartily disagree. There’s lots of uses for the effeminate prettyboys, and they can really be quite attractive, but I don’t think they should be leading any kind of action story. There is no justification for having gorgeous hair, flawless skin and perfectly manicured nails in the heat of a bloody battle.

Comparing Japan and America, father and sibling roles are very different.
In America, the traditional father takes a more active, everyday role in raising his children. Children are supposed to see their father everyday. Conversely, sibling rivalry and antagonism is more tolerated, sometimes even openly encouraged as healthy competition.
In Japan the traditional father is a much more distant figure, someone who works to provide support in the background. Very often children do not see their father for many days. Sibling rivalry is generally discouraged, and older siblings are very strongly encouraged to look after the younger siblings.
This is why father Nier is used for America, and brother Nier is used for Japan.

Egads! It appears that Nier has turned into a pretty boy and scratched Commander Badass with his man claws, does this mean the end for our awesome hero? Will Jared ever get his xbox back? will Coelasquid ever get back to the exbox thing? Seriously how long has that guy been there? Stop buying Gummy worms Jared and get that xbox back.

People don’t cope well with physical ugliness, even if they can cope with a bit of morality, mentality or personality ugliness, give or take an amount of self-delusions.
Ugly people is everyone from you and me to what the viewer considers the average standard of beauty. Lie and trick as much as we want, cheat and cover whatever we wish, ugliness is everywhere to whoever has eyes for it, but once you put your eyes to the test you can also find beauty everywhere.

Every time I see how effeminate bishie boys are fawned over to a ridiculous extent compared to other sorts of male characters, it reminds me of an argument I once read a lesbian making to a guy who wanted to know why she was attracted to girls. She said “girls like beauty, correct? And girls are beautiful, men are not. So it’s only natural.” It may sound over-simplified, but it stuck in my head ever since I saw that. xD

It depends of the audience for example those guys from jersey shore don’t look or act girly at all but a lot of girls and woman think they are the best thing ever (don’t know why) But we also have people that think that justin bieber is how all men should look like xD it really depends of what kind of people you are hanging out.

How beautiful is it in a real life situation when you cannot breed, nor can your girlfriend protect you from a murderer/rapist/thief? there is a very overlooked flipside to that argument. And i would assume that is why some girls are still “programmed” to be straight. Gotta thank cavemen for something or other.
Honestly to each his or her own, but if you stop at one argument convincing you .. well you only get half the story. Now, if a girl can find a pretty boy who can actually fight IRL: more power to said couple. And if say, a lesbian couple decides to actually learn how to shoot, pack a gun, (or other non lethals) and adopt kids that otherwise might suffer, even more power to them.
Also, lastly there are some girls who just want everyone ELSE to think THEY are beautiful. It’s not necessarily that ALL girls are attracted to beauty, because then all girls would be lesbians according to your pet theory. yuri? i believe the term is. In the real world there is both, and everything in between. thank god for diversity.

so to quote: It gets to a point where you have to wonder, if you can only like the character after you turn it into something completely removed from what it canonically is, why do you even bother saying you’re a fan of the character?

my response, and I appologize for the language, but it requires it, because it’s my actual reaction to this sentance:

it kinda reminds me of how in the story “I am Legend” by Richard Matheson, Robert Neville was an old pot-bellied white guy with a burly beard who no longer cares about how he looks because the rest of the world is dead. however in the most recent movie adaptation of the story Robert Neville is Will Smith…

My problem with NieR is that the entire plot could have been resolved peacefully if any of the multiple characters who knew what was going on would *TALK* instead of sitting around doing nothing. No, wait, not doing nothing. Actively making things worse. For themselves, and for everyone else.

Seriously. They could have ended the entire game before the timeskip. Have one of the twins translate if necessary.

“Yo, I’m the shadowlord. I can cure your daughter. Also, my daughter. She has a sister, and the sister, is her.”
“YONAH!”
“YONAH!”
“YONAH!”
“YONAH!”
“YONAH!”
“YONAH!”
-end scene-

The game wasn’t actually made by Square enix, rather by Cavia, who also made the wonderfully twisted Drakengard series.
I figure there’s no actual point in my posting this because for a start you weren’t actually taking the game’s plot into consideration when making this comic, but you do call it jumbled mess of scraps from other projects, which isn’t the case. Sure, it’s jumbled, but once you make it out it’s actually a coherent and, in my opinion, a good story.

I just wanted to say that I totally agree with your post about Nier. Never played it, but the principle relates well to my experiences with Dead Rising 2: Off the Record. A ton of people complained that Frank West had turned “fat and ugly” but frankly (no pun) his whole character is based around his average-joeness, so by giving him a bit of a spare tyre and slight jowels that’s just strengthening his character and giving him a more recognisable design. Not to mention DR1 Frank was no spring chicken himself, if anything I think newer, chubbs Frank is visually more appealing.

Games need more average looking characters for guys and gals. John Marston is a good example, he had a kind of attractive face sure, but he was heavily scarred (and not in a cool, adds hotness way like some characters) and had frankly gross hair, but he was still a fantastic character.

Wow, chatty bunch of fans. I fear any comment will be lost at this point.

Regarding the outfits – to be fair, most of the game playing demographic has been boys/men, so it’s just about selling to the primary audience.

However, that said, I guess I don’t play enough games because I don’t see it being done that often (making females spill out of their clothes regardless of their background or personality). When I look at Christie Montiero, Ling Xiaoyu, Michelle and Julia Chang, Nina and Anna Williams, Jun Kazama, and Asuka Kazama… I see varying styles of clothing, based on their geographic and cultural origins, as well as their vocations. But again, maybe that’s just Tekken and I don’t play enough games?

Either way, I would argue that everybody fights better when they wear less. Clothes are purely for protection from cold weather, when moving into environments not inherently native to the species (north). Beyond that, it’s purely social. Granted, armor and something to secure jiggly bits is never a bad idea, but certain kinds of fighting don’t allow for armor.

If we could get more guys wearing less in games and movies (kilts, etc), then maybe we could lose the pointless stereo-type that the only way to be a man is to be overmuscled and without style?

Come to think of it, I think the rant about the character swap is based on that very stereotype. Just because somebody is “metro” or a pretty boy, or even a little old man, doesn’t mean he can’t/won’t kick copious amounts ot ass.

I like to think i’m chatty with everyone and give them a fair chance because i’m intelligent. Clearly, not everyone agrees with this statement :) Seriously though, coela comes up with some very funny comics and i enjoy the heck out of them, and sometimes surfing the comment box is almost as fun and enlightening.
Your basic premise fails when taking into consideration any type of projectile combat though. Armor was invented for a reason. As was making female gaming characters always have skimpy/revealing outfits. Sex still sells, apparently.

It does not fail. You seem to have mis (or misunderstood?) the context – “Fighting Games” as in hand to hand. Granted, there are some crazy ones that are just crazy arcade eye candy, but for me, fighting games are about hand to hand combat. Tekken, UFC, that ancient “Karate Champ”, Virtua-Fighter, Pride, etc. (I’m assuming Pride has a game, I know UFC does)

Cloth will provide no protection (no significant protection) against that sort of combat, and instead can be used against the wearer, acting as a hand-hold or binding agent/method for the opponent. Not to mention allowing for over-heating or movement restriction as well.

In the case of women, if the female in question is likely to be encountering male opposition, particularly if she is a criminal or assassin, then it could be argued that “spilling out of your clothing” would be an asset, a distraction tool for situations where fighting is required. (and for such types, bulky, restrictive, and/or clanky armor is a bad idea anyway, so again, you’re not missing any protection compared to a track-suit, say)

And you can have strategic bits of armor that still result in a very revealing bit of eye candy for the opposite sex and make up the difference with a shield. Take 300, for instance. Yeah, it’s fiction, yeah, the real Spartans wore much more armor, but so what, we’re talking about games anyway, right? ;)

Likewise, even the Romans went light on clothing compared to modern mentality, even in full on combat, even with projectiles.

Or for that matter, the Egyptians. They were no strangers to warfare, and didn’t exactly hide behind clothing or suits of armor. ;)

And then we have Kratos. Great example. That’s what I’m saying we need more of that. Stands by my other thought too – REAL men wear sandals or no shoes of any kind at all. Gods, ancient warriors, great powerful characters from fiction, human-like monsters and such (also from fiction)…. And yet, we have this notion today that to be a man, one must wear sweltering enclosed shoes at all times, and hide inside of/behind as much cloth as absolutely possible, and of course dress like absolutely every other guy on the freakin’ planet while doing it (choice of formal wear? a suit! Yeah, way to stand out – drop in the ocean comes to mind. lol).

Yeah, Brother Nier actually came first in the final version of the game. Father Nier was a creation for Western audiences.

As for the whole “bishie” thing, I feel like people aren’t giving him a fair shake based on his appearance. Is he worse than Papa Nier? For a Western audience, probably. But character-wise? He’s a Cavia character through and through. The game essentially starts him off as an even more androgynous, even MORE pointy-haired stereotype who’s super optimistic, etc., and then proceeds to essentially tear him apart over the course of the game. It’s Cavia essentially shitting on the idea of the happy capable pretty teenager, like how Kaine’s stereotypical game female “hussy” attire (as Weiss constantly points out) is something nobody would actually wear (and the game hints is her own twisted way of lashing out at society and herself).

I gotta say in all honest that I actually enjoyed the story of NIER, and the game play was not near as tedious and repetitive as Cavia’s other two fiasco’s *cough* Drakengard*cough*Drakengard 2*cough*. Especially the real ending to the game in which

*SPOILERS*

The main character sacrifices himself, and to reflect that fact the game goes in and erases ALL of your Journal Data, all of your items and (this one really drives the point home that your dead) ERASES ALL OF YOUR SAVE DATA FOR THE GAME.

*END SPOILERS*

Seriously, those of you who haven’t tried it yet, give it a shot. You may be surprised.

Don’t know if you will even see this or if it even matters years in the future were Neir Automata is one of the best selling games this year

But Neir REPLICANT (the pretty boy version)( actually changes a lot more then just his appearance #1 the story is told from a brothers perspective not a fathers that means ALOT of changed dialogue (and no it’s not just replacing father with brother)

there are also certain things exclusive to each version. mostly inconsequential stuff but still. even if the story plays out generally the same.